Intimate Partner Violence Against Women
Conditions
Keywords
Domestic violence, Spouse Abuse
Brief summary
The purpose of the research is to evaluate whether routine screening for woman abuse in health care settings, as compared to no screening, does more good than harm. Recent reviews have identified the need for high quality research to understand 1) the actual impact on all women of instituting mass screening procedures to identify woman abuse and 2) the extent to which early identification through screening is effective in preventing or ameliorating important outcomes. The main outcomes for the study are reduction in violence, improvement in life quality, and potential harms of screening. A number of secondary outcomes to help understand the process by which screening and usual care might lead to changes in the primary outcomes will also be assessed.
Interventions
Women are screened for intimate partner violence prior to seeing a health care provider.
Sponsors
Echo: Improving Women's Health in Ontario (formerly Ontario Women's Health Council)
McMaster University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
SCREENING
Masking
SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
FEMALE
Age
18 Years to 64 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Women aged 18-64 years * Patients at the health care site * Able to participate in English * Able to separate from accompanying person(s)
Exclusion criteria
* Too ill to participate * Unable to separate from accompanying person(s) * Unable to speak, read, or write English
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Recurrence of intimate partner violence | 18 months |
| Health-specific quality of life | 18 months |
| Harms of screening and/or usual care | 18 months |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Safety behaviours | 18 months |
| Use of information and resources | 18 months |
| Mental health (depression, post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], anxiety, somatic complaints, substance use) | 18 months |
| Stage in process of identifying and resolving abuse | 18 months |
| Exposure to maltreatment as a child | 18 months |
| Child quality of life | 18 months |
| Global physical and emotional health and well-being | 18 months |
| Health services utilization | 18 months |
Countries
Canada
Outcome results
None listed